How Many Land Animals Are Killed Each Year

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The numbers in this video are shocking. We are great at counting calories, measuring profits, quantifying just about anything. But when it comes to knowing our touch on on other beings, we autumn short. How many animals practise we eat every yr?

A Note on My Procedure for This Article
Why Counting Matters
What's in a Trillion?
Putting the Numbers in Perspective
The Highest Expiry Toll
Coming Up Short: We Don't Fifty-fifty Care to Count Them
In Closing…

You hear a lot of numbers thrown around in the vegan and fauna rights communities. The severity of cruelty in this world is phenomenal and it boggles the heed to endeavor and grasp it in its entirety. Today I want to tell y'all what happened when I attempted, in some sense, to quantify the suffering we humans inflict.

A Notation on My Process for This Commodity

This is going to exist a bit of a unlike video and post than I usually put out. I was planning on releasing a statistical masterpiece today on exactly how many animals nosotros kill globally every yr, pulling data from a multitude of sources and attempting to crunch the numbers for some ultimate view of our affect on other species. But virtually an hr before I needed to be filming, I establish that the numbers I had been using as my base of operations figures weren't correct.

While this mail will still contain statistical information, it volition not be as overly comprehensive equally I had initially hoped and will contain a whole lot more passion and emotion every bit I'm going to share the experience of searching out these figures. All the information I mention will be linked to specific sources throughout the post along with some additional information at the lesser.

Why Counting Matters

Now why do this at all? What can counting these animals perhaps achieve? For that, I'll defer to Harish Sethu, the incredible heed behind the blog Counting Animals who states:

Well-sourced quantitative information has a role to play in building disarming arguments, producing dependable literature, choosing effective forms of activism and promoting a apparent image of the movement in the public sphere.¹
— Harish Sethu, Counting Animals

It's important to realize the true extent of our impact on animals and be able to share reliable information when educating. Believe it or not, statistics can alter minds. And I concord with Harish that using false or unsubstantiated data, no thing how emotionally compelling, does a disservice to the vegan and beast rights crusade. Things are horrific plenty. We don't take to exaggerate or falsify data. And the utter lack of it can be compelling in and of itself, which is what this video ended upward existence most in the end.

I spent over 48 solid hours combing the Un Food and Agriculture Organisation's statistical site² before looking elsewhere for all of the beings for whom they do not account. Those excluded from the FAO's count include:

all marine life—whether by direct slaughter, every bit bycatch, or wild fish who are killed to feed the farmed fish we actually eat
all of the beings who literally suffer to death before slaughter—which, you peradventure surprised to learn, severely dwarfs the number of those killed for fur, in animal shelters, and by vivisection, combined by at least 113.5 one thousand thousand—a number derived from just the number of chickens who suffer to decease (a total of 139,017,000 in the United States alone)
the beings in the dairy and egg industries, whose bodies give out and are made into pet food
the male chicks who are basis upwardly alive or gassed
the mothers of the chickens we eat
the veal calves of the dairy manufacture, taken from their mothers at nascence and slaughtered.
the beings killed for their skins and fur via anal and genital electrocution
the beings killed in ritualistic slaughter or sacrifice, like the estimated 20,000 goats slaughtered every year at the Dhading temple in Nepal,^three or the estimated 250,000 animals sacrificed at the Nepalese Gadhami festival in 2009⁴
the beings who die in laboratories, beast shelters, in rodeos, circuses, zoos, racing, marine parks, blood sports, and other forms of animal entertainment, or killed in auto accidents, or from pollution or deportation or hunting or abandonment

I dug through the makings of the kill counter^five most of u.s.a. are familiar with, finding information technology apace to be a dead end back to the United Nations FAO. And so I figured they must take been using the only statistics on the FAO database that displayed head counts—meaning actual numbers of animals—and used this as my base.⁶

However, I found much later from Harish that the head count figures are only the number of animals at a given moment. It's an "inventory" number. To find the number slaughtered, you have to await into a category chosen "livestock chief"⁷ in which all information is given past weight.

And so, to notice the actual number of individuals killed, y'all'd take to know the average weight of meat that could exist sourced from each animal. Of course, in that location is the boosted challenge of the average weight varying widely from country to country. While the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) provides statistics for private animals,^viii nosotros're left guessing at a global number.

I and so looked into all of the exceptions not covered past the FAO—which I listed earlier—all with the cease goal of producing a number we've never seen before.

But I don't have that for you lot. And no ane does. Fifty-fifty the impale counter is a guess at best, derived from estimates of estimates of estimates.

We don't know how many animals we kill every twelvemonth. And even more and so we don't know how many actually die from suffering, from abject misery or even heartbreak. We don't know the harm we cause.

I did my best to find what data I could for all of these beings in the time I had, but unfortunately, we as a society do not value their lives plenty to even note their passing. They are worth less than a marker on a newspaper. But y'all're damn sure that their profit margin was carefully and painstakingly charted.

To help put this complete disregard in perspective, let's look to the cost of state of war on our world. Nosotros mourn the lives of our soldier and the innocent victims of war. We memorialize them, erect monuments, have remembrance days. And I'yard not here to criticize that or tell you a chicken is more than important than your family fellow member who died in the war. I'grand hither to speak for those without mourning family, those with no memorials, no remembrance days, non even magnetic ribbons for your minivan. I'm here to call up them.

What's in a Trillion?

Before we look at the numbers, let's take a moment to wrap our heads around the concept of what these figures hateful.^ix I'll exist using the Usa understandings of these terms, which is increasingly being used worldwide.¹⁰ Information technology's easy to think that one million is more than one grand and 1 billion is more than one 1000000 and and then on. But exactly how much more than are these numbers? Our conceptual intuition tends to wane when we get this large, as ane has to factor in the exponential nature to fully understand and grasp the enormity inherent in these figures.

A method unremarkably employed to make such massive figures meaningful is to state them in terms of the passage of time:¹¹

A million seconds is about 12 days

So a billion seconds would be what? 24 days, maybe? Or 48? In reality:

A billion seconds is 31.vii years

So so, what is a trillion seconds? Take a guess?

A trillion seconds is 31,709.8 years

To put it in relational terms:

One million is a thousand thousands
Ane billion is a thousand millions
One trillion is a thousand billions (or a million millions).

Now that we take a more physical formulation of what these terms mean, let's dive into the numbers.

Putting the Numbers in Perspective

It's estimated that 108 1000000 people were killed in wars throughout the 20th century, with estimates for all of human history coming around 150 million to 1 billion.¹² In 2013, the United Stated slaughtered viii.6 billion chickens.¹³ Significant, even if using the college interpretation of human being deaths due to war:

7.6 billion more chickens were killed in a unmarried yr in a single country than all humans who have ever died from war.

Worldwide, it's estimated that 50 billion chicken are slaughtered every year.^xiv

Approximately eleven million people died in Hitler'due south holocaust. In 2013, the United states alone slaughtered over 112 million pigs.

Of the victims of the holocaust 1.i one thousand thousand were children. The children of the animate being products industry are non tracked, simply we can compare the 1.1million children with the estimated 1 1000000 veal calves slaughtered year subsequently year after year.

Or all of the uncounted, but given egg product statistics at least 1 billion male chicks of the egg industry who are basis upward or gassed alive.

Or the uncounted baby pigs who slip through the grating of the gestation crate or are unintentionally crushed by their mothers for lack of space.

Or the foals of nursing mares of the horse racing industry who are taken from their mothers and sent to slaughter or clubbed then that pedigreed foals tin can accept their milk.

Am I proverb the death of 1.1 one thousand thousand human children wasn't tragic? Once again, delight listen–I'g speaking for those who don't get remembered.

Every bit a whole, the man death toll encompassing gainsay casualties¹⁵ of Earth War II and second Sino-Japanese war, as well as worldwide Holocaust and concentration camps deaths, is estimated to exist 40 1000000.¹⁶ In the United States alone, the number of chickens who suffer to death every year before even making it to slaughter is over 139 1000000 (139,017,000).¹⁷

99 million more chickens suffer to death earlier even reaching slaughter every year—in the United States solitary than all combat and Holocaust casualties of Globe State of war Two

And this isn't even reaching those animals with the highest death tolls, who tend to exist the least valued—fifty-fifty by vegans.

The Highest Death Toll

We kill roughly ane trillion to 2.8 trillion fish every yr—whether for direct consumption from aquafarms, or those caught in the wild to feed the farmed fish nosotros eat.¹⁸ Accept a moment to re-read the profound departure between billion and trillion.

Exterior of the staggering two.viii trillion fish, what virtually the 703 billion (703,014,400,000) to over 2 trillion (ii,391,686,944,000) silkworms boiled or baked or lanced every year so we tin dress up?¹⁹

How about the one to 6.5 trillion bees enslaved on farms at any given moment—based on the number of beehives listed by the FAO^xx and the boilerplate bees per hive—many²¹ of whom are killed off every fall for economic reasons?

When it comes to the number of animals killed every year, you lot often hear totals like 150 billion rattled off. To exist completely transparent, I've even used that figure several of my videos, having not looked into the kill counter and other statistics to the extent I have at present. Yet, if we taking even just the number for fish, we're already at upwards of 2.8 trillion lives!

The estimated number of humans to have ever lived on earth in the entirety of our species' existence comes to 107.6 billion.²²

Nosotros impale ii.vii trillion more than fish every twelvemonth than all the humans that take ever existed.

Fifty-fifty if we were to use much-repeated estimate of 150 billion animals killed in a single twelvemonth, we'd however exceed the total humans to have ever lived by 42.4 billion.

Now you tell me: who are the real victims in this earth?

Coming Upward Short: We Don't Fifty-fifty Care to Count Them

These numbers go more than and more unfathomable and there is no total because we simply don't care enough to know; and really, in the cease, don't desire to know.

When I realized—in the eleventh hour of attempting to produce this video—that my statistics had been wrong the unabridged time, and that there literally is no sure way to even estimate the deaths nosotros crusade as a species, I had a bit of a mini-breakdown.

Non from the stress of my product schedule or the demands of my perfectionism, but from an overwhelming sense of loss–not the loss of lives itself, but the complete and utter disregard for these losses.

They are then insignificant to us that we literally cannot fifty-fifty acknowledge them if we tried. And fifty-fifty when nosotros endeavor, we come up curt, forget those whose prolonged suffering would most gladly exist met with decease, and in the end, reduce them even further into abstraction.

And they deserve more from us.

If nosotros're going to brood them into monstrosities that abound far across their natural size, keep them in cramped, horrific atmospheric condition rife with disease which literally drives them insane, take their children from them to an often live slaughtering, wear their bodies out to the points of severely premature death, assassinate them anally, pour caustic chemicals into their eyes and dissect them while fully conscious, allow them to dice slowly and painfully through suffocation, beat them to perform for us, rape them to brand milk for u.s., skin them to make clothes for us, and kill them to make nutrient for us, the very to the lowest degree we can do is acknowledge what we've done. But because of our utter condone and the shear number of animals we inflict cruelty upon, we can't even given them that.

We owe the animals more than Meatless Mondays. Nosotros owe them more than than "I'thousand trying simply cheese is then hard!" We owe them more than "I only buy complimentary-range eggs." We owe them more than "At least I'm vegetarian."

For not-vegans who simply don't know—I understand—most of us started in that location. But in one case yous know, it's on you lot to step up and get vegan. As fast as you lot possibly can.

Because these numbers are simply going upwards every single twelvemonth. And the animals can't expect for it to exist convenient or comfortable. The scope of their slaughtering is beyond annihilation we can possibly comprehend because it surpasses any kind of decease toll nosotros've always experienced, and their suffering is utterly unquantifiable.

The all-time way for us to get accurate statistics is not to have better tracking—information technology's to eliminate the need to track. And that only happens by going vegan. Later everything nosotros've washed and go along to practise to animals, don't we at the very least owe them that?

A quote Harish so appropriately has displayed on his blog states:

Not everything that can exist counted counts, and not everything that counts tin can exist counted.
William Bruce Cameron

And these lives count.

In Endmost…

Though information technology concluded up beingness less purely educational and statistics-based than I intended, the fourth dimension it took to produce this video and post taking into account the inquiry for what initially I set out to cover comes to most 64 hours.

If y'all'd similar to help support Seize with teeth Size Vegan so I can keep putting in the long hours in an endeavour to bring even an iota of recognition to the animals of this world and smoothen a lite on the horrors we perpetrate confronting them, even if it'southward not always perfect and nicely packaged, please bank check out the support folio.

If this video post reached you, please–more than even supporting my work–share it around to attempt in the smallest of means to account for our collective negation of all nosotros do.

In closing, I want to say something to the animals:

I'one thousand sorry I couldn't better encompass what you go through. I'm sorry for all that my species has washed and continues to exercise to you. I'm sorry I'm not able to stop it more finer or quickly. I practise see you. I am sorry. I am trying. And I know that it will never exist enough.

— Emily Moran Barwick

Source: https://bitesizevegan.org/ethics/quantifying-suffering-cruelty-by-the-numbers/

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